Editorial
Front Page - Friday, October 15, 2010
Challenges at home and work energize local broker
David Laprad
To Mike Lane, broker and operations manager of Robinson Real Estate, the details of what he does are not as important as his reason for doing them.
His description of his job is the definition of brevity: “We have a team-based approach. I take the bumps out of our system so it runs smoothly.”
The system to which Lane refers to involves the process owner Jay Robinson put in place when he launched Robinson Real Estate in April 2008: When one of the company’s six buyer’s agents acquires a listing, the agent collects all of the requisite information from his or her client and then turns it over to a listing coordinator, who does the contract work, takes pictures and enters all of the information on the Web sites on which Robinson Real Estate’s listings appear. When the agent secures a contract on the listing, he or she gathers the necessary information again and hands it over to a pending coordinator, who takes the sale all the way to closing.
“This frees our agents to be more productive at what we need them to be doing,” Lane says.
And his role in the process? “I wear a lot of hats.”
Fair enough. Lane does offer one revealing nugget, and then downplays its importance.
“We do a lot of advertising, which I coordinate. While that’s important, the lifeblood of this business is referrals. If you don’t treat people properly when things are going well, then you won’t succeed in economic times like this. But if you’re diligent about doing the right thing, then you’ll weather the storms,” he says.
As a result of good word of mouth, a strong presence on the Internet and solid business processes, Lane says Robinson Real Estate saw a significant increase in sales in 2010. However, unlike the years preceding the downturn in 2008, when there was a lot of low hanging fruit for real estate agents to grab, every situation has been a battle.
“Purchasing a home is an emotional process because it’s the biggest purchase people make.
Compound that with the fact that banks are not being as cooperative as they were five years ago, and buying a house becomes a harrowing experience.
We do everything we can to make the process as pleasurable as possible,” he says.
If Lane is tired from the battle, he hides it well, as his voice is energetic and his handshake could crack nuts. The more likely scenario is he’s developed an inner strength as he’s faced a steady stream of challenges. For Lane deals with adversity not only at work, but also at home.
Lane and his wife, Bridget, have a 6-year-old daughter, Mary-Alice, with cystic fibrosis. Doctors diagnosed her with the inherited disease, which causes thick, sticky mucus to build up in the lungs and digestive tract, when she was just over two months old.
Since then, breathing treatments have bookended each day, and daily medication and quarterly visits to T.C. Thompson Children’s Hospital have been among the many steps the Lanes have taken to ensure Mary-Alice remains as healthy as possible.
Instead of bemoaning the situation, Lane counts his blessings. He says Mary-Alice missed only three days of pre-Kindergarten last year, as she was well enough to attend most days, and that both he and his wife have jobs that allow them to spend as much time as necessary with their daughter. When the diagnosis came through, Unum allowed Bridget to begin working at home so Mary-Alice wouldn’t have to enter daycare, and Lane is able to work nights and weekends so he can accompany Mary-Alice and his wife to the doctor.
Lane also says he feels fortunate his daughter is able to do many of the things other kids do, such as play baseball and soccer, although it isn’t always easy to let her out of his reach to do those things.
“I want to keep her in a bubble, but I can’t do that, so how do I balance keeping her isolated so she doesn’t catch anything with letting her be a kid? That’s been tough. But she loved playing baseball, and there weren’t any complications,” he says.
The Lanes are also able to devote their remaining energy to supporting the fund raising efforts of the local chapter of the national Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, which is seeking the means to cure and control cystic fibrosis. Through their work as board members, the Lanes have helped the local chapter prepare for the second annual Three Blind Wines, to be held Oct. 28 at Loose Cannon Gallery on Rossville Avenue beginning at 6 p.m.
While Lane was to the point when speaking about his work, he’s an open reservoir of information about cystic fibrosis. He talks at length about the disease, his optimism that a game-changing medicine will soon be available and the overwhelming support Unum, Robinson Real Estate and their church, St. Timothy Episcopal, has given him and his family. Of the over 400 people who attended a fund raising walk for cystic fibrosis earlier this year, over 100 were Unum employees and more than 30 were members of St. Timothy. In addition, Robinson is Mary-Alice’s godfather.
“It’s great to work with people who care about the same things as you,” Lane says.
Lane is a relative newcomer to real estate. After earning a bachelor’s degree in speech pathology at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, he worked in the retail jewelry business for 11 years, and then switched to insurance, working at Nationwide and Unum for a combined total of 16 years. When Mary-Alice arrived in his late 40s, Lane changed direction again.
“I started thinking I needed a Plan B. I did real estate part-time for several years to earn addition income, but that’s hard to do. When Robinson decided to leave Crye-Leike and start his own company, he approached me about being his broker and operations manager. So I quit Unum and made the transition with him,” he says.
Lane started working for Robinson Real Estate in April 2008. Today, he’s busier than ever, wearing different hats and keeping the firm’s machinery running smoothly. While he likes his work, what he does will never be as important as why he does it.
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